


Legendary Lovers

by Phia



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universes, Dare to Write Challenge, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2018-06-07 10:19:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 50
Words: 18,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6799789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phia/pseuds/Phia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Inkstay's Dare to Write Challenge. Usually at least 250 words per fill. Each one-shot is unrelated to another.</p><p>Stories about Rin, Haru, and their legendary love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. vile romance

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, yeah. For the [Dare to Write Challenge](http://inkstay.tumblr.com/post/143937584209/dare-to-write-challenge)! Not all of these will be angsty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here's](http://inkstay.tumblr.com/post/143937584209/dare-to-write-challenge) the challenge.

It starts with the smell.

It’s thick, cloying up every room in the apartment, and you’d think Rin would be used to it by now. But just because he’s used to it doesn’t mean that he likes it, doesn’t mean that he enjoys it wafting up from his dinner plate every night.

It’s stupid when he snaps at Haru for it, sharp teeth glinting as he bares them. It’s such a _small_ thing - it means nothing, it has no consequence.

Except that Haru hits the refrigerator door with his fist and complains that he never gets to do what he wants under Rin’s watch. He’s not allowed to do any of the things he likes anymore, all the things he’d do in Iwatobi before Rin returned.

_And what’s so important to you?_

_I don’t get to take baths and I don’t get to swim, and now I can’t eat what I want? I’m an adult now, Rin, not a child._

Rin remembers it, how he should’ve listened before the arguing began. The neighbor in the upstairs apartment screamed through the floorboards and threatened to call the police.

Their apartment has a nice view of the beach, the line of the coast snaking upward. Rin does not want to lose this place. He bows his head and cuts off a little bit of mackerel with his fork, and puts it to his mouth.

And Haru says, _Why do you eat it if you hate it so much_?

And when they are in bed together, Rin asks himself - _why do you kiss him if he pulls away? Why does he live here if he hates it so much? Why are you with him if he hates it so much?_


	2. immortality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning: mention of character death

Rin’s husband is dying.

The ocean still quivers in his eyes, but Rin doesn’t see much of the water anymore. Instead, he is faced with the pale of Haru’s eyelids, hiding the blue underneath. Rin passes his fingertips over the lines in his face and brushes them over his eyelids.

Haru is not old. His hair is still that inked splash against the pillow. It has not whitened with time. His hands have not aged - they are not wrinkled with liver spots. He is still muscled - his body has grown softer as days have passed over him, but he still looks very much the same. 

Except for the stillness. Rin is used to Haru’s serenity, the quiet coming from the person plastered to his side. But Haru always wavers, like a potted plant by an open window, its leaves swaying in the breeze. Haru’s nose twitches when he cooks mackerel. The wind passes its hand through his hair when he looks out at the ocean. When he draws, he blinks to refocus his vision, black eyelashes fluttering.

Haru sleeps while Rin walks towards the coast. No one is here at this time of night, not even tourists. Rin understands why. The sky is coated in purple bruises, and the sun has its back to the earth. It has been dark all day, and now it is almost pitch black as he meets the man near the water.

In the jar, the water glints. The man hands it to Rin without a word.

Rin chews at the inside of his cheek. “How do I know?”

The man is the one aging. Lines are carved around his eyes like a sculptor had his way, edged in wrinkles with a chisel. “You don’t.”

Rin wants to pay him, but the man doesn’t accept it. “Swimming is so beautiful, so fluid.” He walks down the coast the opposite way Rin came from.

Rin holds the jar up to the moon, lets it tread through the water. He walks back to the house without thinking about it.

He sets it down next to their nightstand. He gets into bed and curls up under the covers, skin still smelling of salt. He leans his head on Haru’s shoulder. He can’t lay on Haru’s chest anymore - Haru only wakes to cough.   
  
They sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr: [wildharu](http://wildharu.tumblr.com)


	3. teenagers' crimes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt is technically "teenages crimes," but I didn't understand that.
> 
> Tumblr: [wildharu](http://wildharu.tumblr.com)

(1)

Rin rakes his fingers through the hair that hangs over his face. Haru clutches his other hand, his fingers cold from the rain. Rin almost looks at him, but the side of his face is covered by his black hoodie.

They let go of each other’s hands a block before they step into the convenience store. Being apart, unassociated - a semblance of safety.

Rin wants to keep Haru as safe as possible. He wants to smooth his fingers over the shift of Haru’s shoulders whenever. He wants to wake up to the breathing warmth along his side forever.

Haru goes for the aisles in the back, to shove packages of sweet candy into his pockets. Rin wavers in the aisles, keeps a sharp eye on the cashier in the front. The man has his feet on the counter, his phone plastered to his ear.

Rin grabs a bag of chips, glances down at the labeled flavor. It’s some fruit - Rin won’t eat this. He’ll give it to Haru.

They discussed it when they first started. Should Rin ask Haru if he’d found what he wanted? Should Haru yell, “No,” across the store? But they decided that it would be best to keep quiet.

Rin pays for the chips, Haru hovering near the doorway. The cashier barely looks at him, yelling at the person on the other end of the line.

They leave the store with slow steps, as if they have all the time in the world. They don’t look at what they’ve stolen on the train. They save it for Haru’s home, where they can nibble on sweet candy in between exchanging kisses.

Rin doesn’t let himself smile, but he feels it.

 

(2)

“Remember when we stole that guy’s motorcycle?”

Haru nods. How could he forget?

They lay side by side in his bed. They haven’t stopped staring at each other. The moonlight steps into Haru’s room as if it’s sneaking through the party, to the closet, to the jacket pocket with the glinting keys.

Rin shifts until he’s laying on the back, gazing up at the ceiling. Haru lets his eyes smooth over the line of his jaw. Finally, Rin sighs, turning back to Haru. They should be looking at each other.

“I’ve done so much.”

He fits his hand around Haru’s cheek, warm fingers brushing against his skin. Haru keeps looking back as Rin says, “But this is the worst.”

Haru lets Rin fall asleep like that, with his hand on Haru’s face. He takes Rin’s hand in his own and brings him closer, wraps Rin’s arm around his own waist. Rin doesn’t wake.

He will leave early in the morning, board the plane. Tonight, he is here. Haru shoves the cardboard boxes of folded clothes into the back of his mind.

 


	4. renegade

“Rin, I’m tired.”

Rin doesn’t have turn in his seat to confirm it, but he does. Haru’s eyes are half-lidded and his face is pressed against the window. 

Rin looks towards the windshield, at the brown paper bag drifting in front of the glass. There’s only one other car at the gas station, and it’s black with tinted windows. Rin shifts the gear and presses down on the brake, steering them back onto the main road.

“I know.”  


His gaze flits to the rearview mirror. “But we have to lose them.”

Haru lets his sigh hit the windowpane. Rin remembers Haru in the clinic, splayed out on his cot. He was shaking so much that Rin feared the needle in his arm would budge.

Rin shushed him and pushed the silver in with shaking fingers. And Haru had looked at him like he was one of them. 

He doesn’t want that for them. He wants Haru back in the pool, limbs slick with the chlorinated water. Because Haru wants that too. Rin’s eyes catch on the car in the mirror.  
  
Haru is dropping off to sleep, but Rin pushes his foot harder against the gas. And he’ll do anything to make their vision come true.


	5. once in a red moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to change the rating, smh @ me.  
> This chapter is explicit-ish - I didn't change the rating of the entire story to "Explicit" because it's not all going to be like that [probably], plus this isn't THAT bad.

There is a lunar eclipse that dyes the moon red. Haru catches a glimpse of it between the blinds. Then Rin passes in front of him, hair just a pinker color. His blushing face behind the long strands is reminiscent of a crescent.

Haru curls his hand around his cheek. Rin pulls out just a bit, and then slams back in. Haru throws his head back and moans. Rin hovers above him, body shaking with each heaving breath.

He rasps  _Is it good_? around his sharp teeth.  Haru just rests his arms on Rin’s shoulders, pulling him closer to hide his face in Rin's neck.

Haru opens his mouth against it, parts his lips and sticks out his tongue to lick at the sweat. Rin shudders, letting out a long sigh.

The sounds of his body against Haru’s - inside Haru’s - are loud and vulgar in the quiet room. Haru almost doesn’t want to hear them.  
  
“You can ... go harder,” he asks, eyelids falling. Rin freezes for a second before taking the suggestion, thrusting harder in and out until Haru can only follow the rocking tide of his movements.

He shifts on the sheets because Rin allows him to. His eyes are shut but he hears Rin and feels his hot breath beside him and there isn’t a moon. There isn’t a moon, it isn’t red, there is just the high-pitched gasp from Rin when he comes inside Haru. And there is Haru’s answering pant when he joins him, splashing Rin’s abdomen with white.


	6. starshaping

His lips are still blue, wrists bruised from someone’s last grip. Rin wraps his own fingers around them, imagining being the person who pulled him out of the water. They would see his closed eyes, hoping that they would open again. They would see his blued mouth and place their own over his, trying to give from their own lungs.

Rin knows better - this is just another drowned boy. But he is a pretty one - his hair looks like the darkest sky, and his whitened skin looks like he is already glowing.

It’s almost like he was born to die, born to be a star. Rin sees it in his eyes when he opens them, shining white swimming in blue depths.

Rin knows what he is supposed to say to everyone - _This isn’t Heaven. This is where you go before you are led to the sky and told that you can only look down._

For once, the starshaper doesn’t want to complete his task. Rin doesn’t want to imagine the new star alone amidst indigo heights. He wants to bring him back to earth, see him before the moment he plunged into the ocean.

Water still falls from the boy’s hair onto the pillow under his head. The boy still smells of the ocean’s salt, like his friend’s tears

It isn’t his job to notice things. The boy is lax under his touch - he makes no move to rise from the pillow. He lets the news of his death settle upon him. He lets Rin say, in a voice that is not soothing, because he doesn’t need to be soothed: “I am a star shaper. This isn’t Heaven. This is where you go before you are led to the sky and told that you can only look down.”


	7. burning clothes in the backyard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soshi is an OC, not Sousuke or anyone else.

Haru slumps over the steps of the porch. “This is overdramatic,” he complains, shoulders slouching.

Rin throws in the last shirt. He’d saved that one for the end, a plaid one that Soshi had wore on their last date. They almost didn’t make it out of the apartment that day. He remembers raising his head to kiss him, fingers fumbling at the buttons, before Soshi had grabbed his wrists and said, “We need to be on time for our reservations.” He’d ducked his head and smiled, and Rin had pretended to be mad, but he wasn’t.

This deserved to be burned. “Do you have the matches?”

Haru sighs, grabbing the box from where it sat beside him on the step. Rin steps towards him and takes it from Haru’s hand. He opens it and removes a match, then strikes it against the box’s side until it flickers with flame. 

He makes sure that last shirt catches fire before standing back and examining the pile. Soshi liked all sorts of patterns, plaid and stripes and even polka dots, but in such ugly colors.

Haru mutters the last part and Rin smiles, the flames rising in his eyes.

“Doesn’t matter when they’re all black.”

“Are you sure you know how to control a fire?”

Rin rolls his eyes as an answer.

They wait in silence, but soon the flames catch on - Soshi had taken  _ some _ of his clothes, after all. “Did you bring the bucket of water?” Rin asks. He cranes his neck to peer around Haru, to see if he hid it behind him. “I can’t see it anywhere.”

Haru’s eyes widen before he shoots up and disappears through the back door. Rin waits until he returns with the pail he’d left in the kitchen. He hands it to Rin as smoothly as if he was part of an assembly line.

Rin throws the water onto the fire, and the flames sizzle out. He stomps on embers and blackened scraps of fabric. Haru looks at him as he does it - the sweat is plastered to his forehead, but there aren’t tears.

He says this: “You’re not crying.”

Rin looks up. “Eh?” He looks down at his boot again, stomping on a polka-dotted pajama shirt before stepping away from the pile entirely.

“You’ve grown up,” Haru continues. “Unless you used up all of your tears?”

Rin sighs, placing his hands on his hips. “I  _ did _ cry, but not because of Soshi. Because I wasted my time while I could’ve been with ... someone else. But I only cried once - I don’t see the point of it now, when I still have some years ahead of me.”

“Where are you going to live?”

Soshi had hissed, “Rin, I want all of your shit out when I get back from my business trip. When I come back, there’d better be no trace of you.”

And when Rin was wiping the tears from his cheeks, he’d thought about who could stand a trace of him.

He bites at the inside of his cheek. “I don’t ... know.”

Haru blinks, still surprised. Surprised after Rin’s phone call, surprised that he and Soshi weren’t going to work out, surprised at the relief he’d felt flooding through his veins. He’d clutched his phone and wondered  _ What is wrong with me _ ? And now he knows, but it isn’t wrong.

“Fine. You can stay with me.”

“Oi, Haru. If you don’t want me to--”

“No.” Haru looks to the fence that separates them and Soshi’s backyard and the pile of his burnt clothes from everything else. “It’s fine.”

His nose crinkles. “It stinks. Let’s go inside.”  
  
And so they do.


	8. chameleons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *chants* dystopia dystopia dystopia

He can’t say he’s sorry — it doesn’t mean anything. 

Haru sits in the chair beside him. He won’t look at Rin, but there’s no need for that. His eyes flicker over what lays on the Magistrate’s desk.

There are two manila file folders open. Nanase Haruka’s and Matsuoka Rin’s photos stare up at the ceiling. The men in the photos are both dressed in gray. Rin knows what is behind their photographs - work papers. Haru is a clerk who only opens his mouth to report totals. Rin is on a paid internship with the Chameleons. His station is at the college that both of them attend.

Droplets of chlorinated water fall from Haru’s hair. Rin’s fingers twitch with the desire to push it back. They are probably not allowed to touch.

They’re already here, so what’s the harm in touching him?

Haru’s hands are on his knees. Rin reaches to take a hand in his, more for himself than Haru. He can’t decide which one of them is going to have it worse. Rin expects that he’ll have to turn in his badge. Haru will have to turn in his team swimsuit. 

Swimming is a recreational activity, not a means to a permanent position with the Socialization and Recreation Department’s most prominent taskforce. But Rin remembers the way that Haru slipped through the water, letting it linger on his skin. The water almost seemed like it had a thousand hands, and each one attempted to grip him - along his arms, his legs, the hair plastered to his forehead. But he’d dipped and dodged through them.

And he’d come to the end of the pool, popped up from under the water. Rin had crouched down, the pool’s lights glancing off of his Chameleon enamel pin.

Haru’s eyes had been wide, fright pressed against their glass panes. Rin felt like he had to say everything was okay.

That’s why they’re sitting here, because Rin didn’t read him the 5th Amendment of the district rulebook. He’d seen the way the water touched him before it had to let go. He wouldn’t let the words out. He’d extended a hand and pulled Haru out of the pool.

There was no one in the room, but he whispered, “You know what you’re doing, right?”

The swimmer’s eyes flicked away from him, and when he spoke, Rin knew it was because of the pin. “Yes.”  
  
The officer strolls into the room. Haru’s palm is as cold as the water.


	9. barely breathing

The neon green line barely edges upward. Rin almost holds in a breath, but his patient is already doing that for him.

He meets the sheets with the same pallor. He could look worse, but he could look better.

Rin’s fingers flex around the clipboard in his palms. They’ve pumped his patient full of drugs and oxygen. The man is more of a machine, needles pressed into his slack arms.

All Rin hears is the beeping, ringing in his ears when he steps into the elevator, slinks down to the employee parking garage. When he closes his eyes, he sees the green line, how it barely moves. Nanase is barely breathing, half-dead, which might be why his visitors always end up staring at the wall instead. Nanase is barely breathing and Rin has had patients die on him before - sometimes, there’s nothing you can do. 

But Rin wants to see him awake. He’d seen how Nanase looks more alive than dead with the identification they’d unearthed from his wallet. 

He may be a little biased, but he wants to see the line go higher, for a pulse to thump behind his wrist, for color to wash into his skin.

He sees Nanase shift. He may get his wish.

The beeping grows more rapid, and Rin sets the clipboard down on the table beside the bed, rushing forward to place his hands on Nanase’s shoulders. Nanse  gasps behind the mask, fighting for air as his eyes shoot open. Rin holds him to the mattress so he doesn’t hurt himself trying to shoot upward.  
  
Nanase wilts back into the bed, blue eyes wide. Rin picks up the clipboard and says, “Hi, I’m your doctor, Dr. Matsuoka."


	10. fool's hope

Fool’s hope — he’ll come back for you. He’s sick of Australia, turning his nose up at the ocean that used to wash in comfort with the tide. He’s sick of the team, sick of the memories Australia brings back to him. He’d rather be in Japan with you, sitting at the table and waiting for mackerel, chin in his hand as he smiles.

Fool’s hope — he forgot about the fight that the two of you had when he came home on break. He doesn’t remember the way that you’d glared at him after he’d said  _ I love you _ . He doesn’t remember the way that your face crumpled when you said,  _ I won’t let you ruin your own dream.  _ He was pinned between your hands and the wall, between the Olympics and his home, and you knew that he needed one but wanted another.

Fool’s hope — he’s coming back tomorrow. He’s coming back next year, next month. He’ll come back when Nagisa and Rei are home from university. He’ll come back for dinner. He’ll be there when you wake up in the morning. He’ll lift you up from the bathtub, the pool, out of bed. He’s sorry and he’ll tell you with his lips on yours, with his lips parted, with the words falling from his mouth. He didn’t mean it.   
  
Fool’s hope — he hasn’t sweat out his love for you into the pool. He feels it bead onto his skin, drip down his face while he sits in his hotel room and the air conditioner is out. He doesn’t send letters because he's just too busy. He glances at fountains and flower shops and art supply stores and he thinks of you each time. He sees you in the reflection of every body of water, looking back at him and waiting. He will reach out and touch you. He will cup you in his palms. He will come home.


	11. silence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of random. I thought this prompt would be easy but it wasn't.

Rin likes the way Haru wakes, eyes opening before slipping closed again. When he feels Rin’s fingers in his hair, he smiles.

* * *

 

It’s a rule to never interrupt Haru while he’s eating dinner. He takes time to savor every bite of mackerel, even when he’s eating on a plane or at a restaurant. Sometimes Rin finishes his dish first and just watches him, the slow way he raises each bit to his mouth, closing his eyes after taking a bite.

“Is it  _ really _ that good?” Rin teases.

Haru gives him a look, and Rin knows the answer.

During one of their dinners, though, Rin asks him a question. 

“It doesn’t bother me, but - is it true that you don’t cheer for me when I swim? I mean, I’ve heard that you’re just quiet. You’re watching but you don’t cheer like Nagisa or Rei or Makoto.”

Haru’s eyes drift away from him, his mind lost into thought, before looking back at Rin.

“It’s true,” Haru replies. “I’m usually quiet. But that’s because I’m focused on the way you swim.”

His cheeks pinken and Rin raises an eyebrow. Haru says, “You like the way I swim and I like the way you do too.”

Rin asks, “Wanna get out of here?”

* * *

 

Rin likes the way Haru looks while listening to Rin’s vows. His eyes are wide with tears, making them glassy. He looks like he’s seeing something that he’s never seen before.

And it’s just Rin with a sheet of paper held in his shaking hands, but also, it isn’t.    
It’s the smile across Haru’s face through his tears, his own vows, and then the kiss to seal the deal. They pull away from each other and everyone is cheering and clapping, but they embrace and stop speaking. They smile at each other, silent, then kissing, happy.


	12. chrysalis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chrys·a·lis  
> a quiescent insect pupa, especially of a butterfly or moth.  
> the hard outer case of this, especially after being discarded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit-ish stuff.

(1)  
“I’m trying to tell you I love you.”

Rin cards his fingers through the hair at the back of Haru’s head. His head is warm and he is sweating as he looks at Rin without seeing him.

“I...”

Rin moves his hand to curl around Haru’s hip. His other hand is already curled around Haru’s left. He pulls Haru closer, then a little farther out again, before shoving Haru’s hips down onto his own.

“Hah ... Haru. Do you ... love me?”

Haru curls his hands around Rin’s shoulders. His nails bite into Rin’s skin. He dips his head down so Rin can’t see his face.

Rin grips him and turns them over so that he’s on top. He twists his fingers into the sheets, tipping his head backward when Haru presses in.

 

(2)  
He’d snuck off the plane and slid into a cab, abandoned the team at the airport. _For the Team_ , Haru thinks, watching as Rin’s chest heaves upward in sleep.

Why did he come? Why did he call Haru and say, _I’m here outside your dorm_ , and why did this happen, and why is he bare under the blanket? And why did the words come and why couldn’t Haru repeat them and why couldn’t Haru answer his questions?

Rin deserves sparkling champagne under a crystal chandelier, the heavy weight of a gold wedding band above his knuckle. Rin deserves to wake up to warm breath across his neck, kisses down his chest, breakfast in bed. He deserves to be with a lover, not a phone call or a text, not a tired university student who gave up on everything.  
  
Rin deserves, and Haru knows this. He pushes some of Rin’s hair away from his face. The sun of the morning after kisses him instead.


	13. epiphany

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying to think about a specific moment where Haru could realize he's in love with Rin and vice versa, but it was hard because there's just so many moments to choose from! Or create! And isn't that something amazing about this pairing ...

The letter lies on Haru’s desk. He gives it a last look before crawling under his covers.

Australia isn’t a good place for Rin, and they both know it. Why didn’t Rin just stay? This need to be better, to emulate Haru stroke by stroke - why? Why couldn’t they just swim together?

He remembers how his heart lurched in his chest, how he just didn’t understand why Rin was leaving after such a short time. Leaving the home that he’d made among the cherry blossoms for strange accents and animals and a land full of sand.

 _The “him” from that time is swimming in front of me_.

When Haru closes his eyes, he can see Rin right in front of him too. A rare sight, something that has to be made up now. The way Rin would slice through the water, quick and meeting it beat by beat. His father’s memory sliding along with him through the lane.

Rin swims because he fears his father fading away. Rin is disappearing in chlorinated drops that evaporate in the sun.

The way he looked pulling himself from the pool and stretching out on the tile. Staring up at Haru with a heaving chest, a smile pulling at his lips. _Romantic, right?_ — Rin seemed like the type to believe in these things, to write letters to people who would never read them. Tapping a pen against his lips, staring out his bedroom window while the ocean laps the coast.  
  
Haru leaves his bed, crossing the room to his desk. He picks up a notebook and a pencil and sits. Moving Rin’s letter to the side, he begins to write.


	14. blank space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to all those rich couples at parties that act like their marriage is ending every day.

The fish is too salty, almost stinging Rin’s tongue. He raises his head when someone calls his name.

“Where’s Nanase tonight?”

Rin pastes on a smile and jostles some cod to the side of his plate. “He wasn’t feeling well tonight. He did want to come, but I told him he should rest.”

The associate nods, turning back to the partner of his law firm. Rin allows himself a final glance at the empty chair beside him before he stands to leave.

The ride is quiet on the way home. Rin didn’t picture it’d be like this - he figured that he’d at least be talking to Haru. But they’d had that fight a week ago about how their priorities. They’d had that fight this morning about how Rin presented this image to the company, and then Haru had yelled that he wouldn’t be going to the company dinner.

Rin’s fingers curl around the steering wheel. The streetlights blur together like gold has gone drunk. Soon, he pulls into his rain-slicked driveway. He parks, leaves the car, opens the door and steps into their house.

Haru is sitting on their couch with a blanket around his shoulders. The nighttime news is playing on the television. Faded images flickering over Haru's face. 

Rin takes a seat next to him. Haru reaches for the remote on the coffee table and turns off the television. They look at each other.

“I’m sorry,” Rin says. He sighs, running his fingers through his hair, heavy with gel. “I don’t ... I keep talking over you, and I shouldn’t, because you don’t really say as much as I do anyway.”

Haru’s head is the only thing sticking out of the white blanket. He chews at his lower lip before standing, heading back to their bedroom in a mass of fleece.  
  
Rin looks down at his hands. He thumbs over the wedding band on his finger. He says nothing.


	15. lazarus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday, Haru.  
> BBC Sherlock S2E3 spoilers.

Rin wipes his eyes with his sleeve again and again. Haru watches from behind the grove of trees, his black coat brushing against bark.

Rin reaches out and lets his fingers glance off the glinting marble tombstone. He brings his arm back to his side. He takes a shuddering breath. Haru holds himself in it, stretches himself across the sigh. 

It’s not a movie on daytime television that he can turn off with the push of a button. It’s not from a book that he only has to read for a class assignment. This is his  _ life _ , but Rin doesn’t think that he has one anymore. 

He believes that Haru is gone, and he doesn’t know that the trees hide his lover. He doesn’t know about the plan. All he knows is that Haru’s voice cracked when he said goodbye, that his coat swooped behind him as he fell towards the pavement.

This is the fifth month. Rin comes every Saturday, bringing flowers from the community garden, the one that he and Haru left behind, or just a quick bouquet at a gas station. The grave is littered with cherry blossoms and carnations and lilies and Haru wants to gather them in clumps. He wants to bring fistfuls of flowers back to the bungalow.

It’s probably a good thing that he can’t. There would be blooming, broken reminders of Rin in every corner.

Rin blinks down at the grave, bent head conveying his respects. “I’m still hoping for my miracle,” he says, thinking that no one is there to hear him.  
  
He trots off, shoulders straight, chin up. He had five months to cry. Haru leaves in the opposite direction.


	16. megalomania

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut & fluff. The latter is surprising for this series.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday to Haru. I love you so so much even though you're not reading this.
> 
> Also, I looked up what megalomania means and the definition Google uses is, "delusion about one's own power or importance (typically as a symptom of manic or paranoid disorder)." I experience hypomania as part of bipolar disorder and I know about this, and I'm not applying the mental health definition to this text.

“Without you, I have nothing to aim for, you know?”

 

* * *

 

“He’ll have the mackerel,” Haru says, handing their menus back to the waiter. Rin raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth to say something, but the waiter is gone before he knows it.

He returns his confused look to Haru. “I didn’t want fish. I wanted steak.”

“You always have steak,” Haru says, tilting his head to the side. “Fish has plenty of protein.”

He has a point. Rin likes the mackerel, anyway. He picks all of it off of his plate, making sure that there isn’t a bit left.

“See.” Haru is the one who receives the check. “I told you it was good.”

Rin bites down on a smile. “Yeah. You did.”

 

* * *

 

“Thank you very much, Matsuoka-senpai!”

Rin wants to remind the swimmer that they’re not in high school. He has to watch him bow his head, chlorinated water falling back into where it came from.

“Don’t worry about it.” His phone sits on top of his towel, and it buzzes with a call. Rin leaves the pool’s edge to pick it up.

It’s from his boyfriend. He answers the call and presses the phone to his ear. “Haru?”

“You’re coming to meet me in a few minutes, right?”

“Yeah. You’re still at the beach?” Haru went down to the stand to better draw the ocean for his sketching class. Rin doesn’t even think that he needs the reference. He knows it so well.

“Yeah. Be here soon.”

Rin blinks. “You do know I’m with Ryuto, right?”

There is a pause. “Yes,” Haru says, voice firm. “I know.”

He hangs up. Rin stares across the distance of the pool for too long.

 

* * *

 

His wrists ache from where the tie rubs against them. He presses his face against the bed, hiding his blush against the sheets.

Haru slams into him and Rin cries out, high and sharp.

“Rin, I’m _coming–_ ”

He spills into Rin, a rush of warmth. Rin tries to rub himself against the bed, desperation singing in his muscles. But Haru only allows him to come when he’s fucking into his hand.

He unties Rin and applies lotion to his wrists, rubbing it in with circular strokes.

“Haru?”

Haru looks up from the base of Rin’s hand. “Yeah?”

“Could you get me a glass of water?”  
  
Haru slips off the bed and pads off to the kitchen. Rin reclines on the pillows with a smile on his face.


	17. bedroom hymns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit content ahead.  
> Also ... should I change the rating of this work? After the content ahead? I don't know.

He traces his nail along the hard line of Rin’s abs. He lowers his mouth to the skin and licks down to his navel, dipping his tongue into it.

Rin's thighs are wrapped around Haru and they squeeze him, trying to handle the pleasure, the teasing. Haru is almost there, almost—

His hand wraps around Rin’s cock, and Rin whines, arching his back. He closes his eyes and moves his hips into the touch, sliding his cock back and forth through the hold of Haru’s fingers.

Haru’s lips feel their way across his collarbone, studding it with small kisses. The touches are so light, not there and not enough.

“ _H-Hah_ — please.”

He’s not above begging now. He can’t be when he’s with this man, the one who brings him pleasure, brings him to his highest point.

Haru strokes him with a consistent rhythm. His thumb slips against the head of Rin’s cock on every third stroke. He presses his thumbnail over the slit, and Rin shakes, mouth open, gasping. He claws at the sheets and stares up at the ceiling of their bedroom and swears that this has to be Hell. They’ve been at it for what seems like _hours_ and he wants to enjoy it but he wants it to be over.

Haru squeezes the base of his cock and takes the head into his mouth. Rin feels the lava swish in his veins, the heat climbing up his spine. Haru spends time teasing him like that, licking around the head and dipping his tongue into the slit.

“Haru, Haru, please, please—”

Haru releases the base of his cock, setting his hands on Rin’s thighs and swallowing more of him. And Rin is done for, coming in hot spurts down Haru’s throat.  
  
Haru tightens his lips around him when he pulls off. The high whine ripping from Rin's throat wavers in reply. He always sings under Haru’s touch. And that’s the way they like it.


	18. reminisce

He sees himself in the airplane window, his haggard reflection, wrung and worn. His hair's all messy and there’s gray under his eyes. He sighs, flopping against the seat.

An attendant comes up to him, smile bright and wide. “Is there anything that you need, sir?”

Rin shakes his head. “No, thank you.”

She nods and leaves. Rin looks down at his hands and remembers how Haru’s felt in them. The tips of his fingers are smooth and uncalloused. The water meets him with a reverent grip, and Haru’s soft hands reflect that.

He’d stood in front of his house and he looked so small. Haru is shorter, but with the empty house behind him, he’d looked like the sole muse in a portrait. Someone should have stepped onto the canvas, into the frame, and maybe that person was Rin.

But after Rin boarded the cab, Haru had turned and shuffled into his house, closing the door behind him. He’d be attending a local university, pursuing the arts. Meanwhile, everyone had already hopped and gone, leaving him to be in the small town by the sea.

Rin considers the sky to be a different type of ocean — both are unpredictable plateaus of varying blue. The ocean has to be pink sometimes. Everything changes, turns a different color.

“Are you gonna miss me?”

He’d meant to tease, taking Haru’s hand in his own and leaving kisses at his fingertips. Haru’s eyes were painted midnight from the window and he’d nodded, which meant yes.  
  
The word tastes like salt in Rin’s mouth. He pins the sky with his gaze and thinks  _ I’ll come back to the land under here. I promise. _


	19. there is always a price

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Implied homophobia ahead.

His parents come home with a list of contacts. They sit across from him in a disapproving row and pull up photo after photo on their phones. Haru almost sees red, the color of Rin’s hair. It feels like he's watching Rin whip his head to look at something.  Haru feels red flash in front of his eyes.

He wasn’t used to justifying himself, saying that he was okay. He just knew and no one had ever told him that it was wrong. His friends knew and never said a thing. Nagisa and Rei were the same way.

“I’m not going to be living in the house anymore. I’m moving to Australia with Rin.”

That was all his parents needed to know before they showed off one girl after the next.  _ This girl is an amazing nurse, doesn’t she have the nicest eyes? This girl works at the local— You knew her when you were younger— _

He spends those meetings thinking about Rin’s eyes when they’re half-lidded, Rin’s tongue slipping against his. He doesn’t owe his parents anything. He doesn’t need to come back to this place.

 

* * *

 

They buy tickets for a flight that takes off at the edge of dusk. Rin meets him at the airport.

When he sees Haru, he smiles, and Haru watches his shoulders fall. This is the reason why he’s doing this, and he doesn’t plan on regretting it.

“Are you ready to go?”

Haru nods. He looks at Rin and shifts from foot to foot. Rin grins, flashing those shark teeth. He holds his hand out to Haru, fingers spread.

Haru takes it and threads their fingers together. His own shoulders fall. They walk side by side.


	20. punch-drunk love

Rin can only see the bubblegum pink of Nagisa's jacket, the boy's back on his face. Rin curls his hands around his sides and rights him, shoving him across the lawn.  
  
"Take care of your boyfriend!"   
  
He yells this at Rei, who flushes a darker color than Nagisa's jacket. Rei pulls Nagisa by the collar and they retreat to a corner of the yard.   
  
The party is a small one, students from Iwatobi and Samezuka congregating in Momo's backyard. Everyone has been drinking, and Rin turns to Haru, who sits on the same outdoor couch with him.   
  
They already finished their first bottle. They've been sharing a second one, some alcoholic beverage tasting of strawberries. Haru has his shoes off, feet on the low table in front of them. Rin leans on his shoulder. His legs stretch out on the couch cushions.   
  
He whispers, "Are you having fun?"     
  
Haru pauses, the bottle halfway to his lips before he nods. He knocks it back and drinks. Rin watches his Adam's apple bob. Haru makes his final swallow and places the bottle in between his legs. He turns his gaze to Rin.   
  
"Why're you looking at me?"   
  
That's a question they could ask each other extensively. They always have their eyes on each other. It's strange, but Rin has grown to appreciate it, the way someone cares about him even though they don't say it much.   
  
Rin tilts his head. "You're pretty, I don't know."   
  
Haru raises an eyebrow. Rin expects something scalding, is ready to handle it, but,   
  
"You ... too."   
  
Haru frowns down at the bottle in his lap, grabbing it for another drink. But Rin's hand comes down on top of his. Their fingers curl around the bottle's neck.   
  
"Really?" Rin asks. Haru nods, blue eyes glittery.   
  
"Yeah."   
  
Rin leans forward and bumps their mouths together. Haru is unresponsive for a moment before he returns the kiss, lips moving over Rin’s. Rin bites at his bottom lip and Haru parts his own, allowing Rin’s tongue to slip inside and move over his.  
  
They pull away. Haru’s lips are like rose petals, soft, slick with saliva instead of dew. Rin kisses him again. 

Dusk settles into the sky. It tints them coral, turns them into the lovers they were always supposed to be.


	21. summer solstice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hint of internalized homophobia ahead.

They have to wait longer for the dark to come. The daylight seems to stretch on endlessly, lasting longer than it ever has before. Haru sits, legs crossed, a sketchpad laid out on his lap. He keeps looking at the blinds, the slivers of the light sky. He shifts.

Rin has the end of his pen in his mouth. He’s working on some science homework. He slips the pen out and stares at Haru. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Haru replies, setting the pad on the floor. “Do you want something to eat?”

Rin shrugs, and Haru takes this to mean yes. He pads to his kitchen and cooks some mackerel. He tries to focus on the food in front of him, the sizzling of the grill, the scent of the fish. He brings two plates back for him and Rin.

Rin thanks him for the food. They eat until the sky shifts into darkness.

Rin puts his chopsticks down and crawls over to Haru, placing his hands on his shoulders and kissing him.

He tastes of mackerel and he smells like the chlorinated water of Samezuka’s pool. Haru kisses him back, dropping his chopsticks onto his plate.

He doesn’t ask why Rin only kisses him when it’s dark. He feels like he gets a sense of the answer. Maybe he doesn’t like that Haru’s a boy, or maybe he doesn’t like that Haru is himself.

 _It doesn’t matter_. Their lips smack against each other and they are the only noise in the dimming room.

 _It doesn’t matter_. Rin asks if he can take Haru to bed.  
  
Haru always says yes. _It doesn’t matter._


	22. reality bites

Haru doesn’t want to go in the first place. But Nagisa pleads and whines over voicemails leading up to the day before. Haru finally says yes and his phone blows up with grateful texts from Rei, because as much as he loves his boyfriend, Haru’s rejection was all he could talk about for weeks.

They meet at a restaurant in Tokyo. Nagisa starts the conversation, waving his chopsticks in the air and catching the attention of other patrons with his shrieking. Rei always has a reply, and Sousuke quirks a smile at some of it.

Makoto talks about their studies and Rin nods, turning away from the weird three-way conversation to listen.

“And Haru is still swimming, fast as ever.” Makoto pats Haru on the shoulder and he almost feels like a dog at a pet show.

Rin quirks an eyebrow, then grins, showing off those teeth. “I bet. We definitely have to race again.”

Haru opens his mouth to say something, but Nagisa is reaching across the table of the booth. He pulls at Rin’s shoulder and his attention. “Rin, Sousuke told us—!”

Rin’s sweater is already oversized, the result of some fashion trend. Its fabric slips to expose his shoulder. He’s wearing a thin T-shirt underneath, but everyone else already sees them.

They’re a line of love bites, about four or five of them. They lay on the skin of Rin’s shoulder. Haru thinks they look weird for love bites, large and harsh, almost claiming. Nagisa claims he can see teeth marks.

Makoto hides his blush with a hand. Sousuke smirks and Rei is already chastising Nagisa for being so _impolite_.

Haru’s focus is on Rin, the laugh he makes as he drags the sleeve back into place. “Ah, yeah, I’m assuming that’s what Sousuke told you.”

Makoto’s eyes open wide and he stops hiding his face. “You’re _dating_?!” His face scrunches up at Sousuke, who raises his hands in surrender.

“Woah, woah, there’s no fucking way—”

“Rin, who’s the lucky guy?” Nagisa asks. Rei doesn’t even shush him, evidently interested in the answer as well.

“His name is Soshi.” He looks up at the light above their table. He doesn’t repress the fond smile uncurling over his face. “He goes to my university; he’s in my English Literature class.”

Nagisa puts his elbow in the table and rests his chin on his palm. “How long have you been dating? Does he swim?”

“All the questions.” Rin chuckles, bringing his gaze back down. “A few months. He doesn’t swim.”

He finally looks at Haru, who stares back. “He plays volleyball.”

“Hmm,” Nagisa says, reclining into the seat. “The water doesn’t embrace him. Right, Haru?”

Everyone is looking at him now, waiting for the verdict. Haru shrugs, pinching a piece of mackerel between his chopsticks. “Maybe he just isn’t open to the water. The water accepts everyone, as long as they want to be accepted.”

He chews on the fish as Nagisa asks more questions like, “Why didn’t you tell us, Rin-chan?”

“I thought it was too early,” he says, steak halfway to his mouth.

Haru watches the conversation until they are all caught up in each other. He reclines into the seat and gazes out the window behind the booth. If he thinks about something other than this, he can dream, fade away, be in another place.  
  
He becomes the fork clinking on a plate, the thump of the waiter’s shoes as he walks by, the flickering lightbulb at another table. He closes his eyes so he can’t see Rin, so he can be someone other than the man in love.


	23. destroyed childhood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a hard prompt because besides their parental situations, I feel like Haru and Rin had pretty good childhoods.

“Haru’s parents are away in Tokyo on business. His grandmother is living with him.”

The open box sits between Rin, Makoto, and Haru. Haru reaches for another macaroon, popping another pink cookie into his mouth. Rin watches him with wide eyes.

“Your parents don’t live with you? Aren’t you lonely?”

Haru shrugs, still chewing. Makoto watches him, lips drooping into a frown. Haru swallows and looks back at Rin.

“No. My grandmother is there. And my parents were never around that much. And Makoto lives near me.”

Makoto smiles and nods. It's almost like he forgot about how bad he felt. “Yeah! And Haru always comes over to play video games. It’s fun.”

Rin looks down at the box of macaroons. He feels like offering Haru more of them, but he’s not sure if their teacher has more, and if Haru wanted some he’d get them for himself. Maybe he’d see it as rude. Definitely not romantic.

“Oh,” Rin says instead. “I wish I lived with _my_ dad.”

Haru turns to him, distress set into his small face. His eyes are wide and his mouth is open, just a little, as if he doesn’t know what to say. Rin doesn’t want to see him sad.

“Do you want the last one?”

It’s pistachio flavored. Rin can only stand so many sweets, and Makoto’s given up on eating them a while ago. So Rin shakes his head, and Haru grabs the macaroon for himself.

He pinches the cookie in between his fingers and nibbles on it. Rin watches and thinks that this boy doesn’t have the world, just like him, but he could have it if he tried.  
  
They could have it if they tried.


	24. narcissism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some weird sort-of-almost-American AU. Also, I realize I didn't really touch on the narcissistic part of Rin's personality. Oh well, next time maybe?

Rin Matsuoka is so hot that it’s surprising the pool water doesn’t instantly evaporate around him. He leans against lockers and it’s unbelievable that the steel doesn’t melt under his touch. No one can look him in the eye without flushing, teachers and students alike.

Except for Haru.

See, the problem isn’t that Rin’s hot. He’s easy on the eyes, and he likes to wear crop tops, putting his abdomen on display. Haru often spends time staring at the exposed skin, thinking of licking up Rin’s torso. A pink Makoto has to snap him out of it.

The problem is that Rin knows it.

Haru waits outside a classroom for Makoto to finish talking to their teacher about their upcoming test. Rin stands a little ahead in the hallway. He’s wearing a frayed black crop top and jean shorts. He leans against the wall behind him, and Haru lets his gaze fall to Rin’s muscled legs.

“So ... ah. Please consider my confession!” The girl thrusts the pink envelope to him, nodding before scurrying away. Rin’s bag rests next to his feet. He doesn’t even bother examining the envelope, chuckling at it before opening his bag.

It holds enough envelopes to rival a post office.

Rin tucks it between two teal envelopes before zipping the bag closed. He grabs it and swings it onto his back, when he catches sight of Haru.

He’s waiting for the telltale blush, but Haru holds his gaze. That is, until Rin drops his, eyes scanning over Haru’s body.

When their gazes meet again, Haru still isn’t blushing. Rin’s smirk vanishes. He snorts, rolling his eyes. 

Haru turns into the classroom, where it looks like Makoto is wrapping up. When he looks back at Rin, he’s surprised to see Rin’s already looking at him.

He dips his head, red hair falling, but Haru can still catch his blush.

“Sorry, Haru,” Makoto says, appearing between them. Haru doesn’t speak, letting Makoto know it’s fine. They stroll down the hallway, Haru feeling the eyes on his back.  
  
Makoto is too lost in his own words to notice Haru’s smile.


	25. frosted grass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had trouble with this prompt.

Rin closes the room’s door behind him and tilts his head at Haru. “Hey. Are you here to use the pool?”

Haru nods. Rin smirks and starts walking down the dorm’s corridor, leaving Haru to trail behind him.

He’d been coming over to use Samezuka’s indoor pool for the past month. He’d wanted to use their own pool, but Nagisa had made up the Frosted Grass rule.

“If there’s frosted grass anywhere outside, we can’t use the pool. If frost is on grass, who knows where else it could appear. What if the pool just freezes when you’re swimming in it?!”

Rei had pushed up his glasses and lifted one finger in the air. “Nagisa-kun, it doesn’t work like that. See—”

“I guess that makes sense,” Haru said, one foot kicking at the grass. It wasn’t frosting over yet, but it would soon.

“No, Haruka-senpai—”

The next morning, while walking with Makoto, Haru noticed that the grass had a fine layer of frost over it. It crunched underneath their shoes and grayed the green. So he’d been coming to Samezuka on his own — they had the joint practices, but Haruka came on the weekends as well.

As he darts from one side of the pool to the other, he knows that Rin is watching him. His eyes are scanning the way Haru moves. He doesn’t get to see Haru like this much anymore, since he’s busy as a captain and a competitor.

He swims to the other side of the pool and pops his head over the surface of the water. Rin is watching him with a familiar look on his face.  
  
“Thanks for letting me swim here,” Haru says. Rin nods and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	26. blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: self-harm. I didn't write the act of doing it, though.

“Sorry,” Rin whispers. Haru wraps the towel around his wrist, head tilted down to see better in the lamplight. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean ... you didn’t have to come... I’m sorry.”

Haru frowns. “Of course I had to come.”

He looks up at Rin, still pressing the cotton to his skin. “Why wouldn’t I come? I wanted to.”

Rin starts crying again, hot tears skidding down his face. He feels like he’s been crying for too long. He feels like he’s been awake for days. Something is pressing behind his eyes and he feels hot and tired.

“Do you have bandages?”

Rin shakes his head, sniffling. “There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom.”

Haru curls Rin’s fingers with his own before setting his arm on the bed. “Okay, I’ll be right back. Don’t move it.”

He says it like he’s not a few slashes on his wrist and lower. Once Haru leaves, Rin looks at the wounds and he knows why. It’s not a matter of how deep they weren’t. It’s the fact that Rin consciously decided to press a blade to his wrist and wouldn’t stop until he drew blood. And then he called Haru, crying, because it hurt more than he thought it would, and maybe that was just from the shock, the way that he rebelled against his own body and mind.

Haru enters the room with a plastic case. Rin furrows his brow. 

“You brought the whole thing?”

Haru shrugs. “I didn’t wanna be in there for too long. People might start asking questions.”

Rin watches as he sets the entire first aid kit on the mattress. He snaps open the case and its two sides display an array of materials.

Rin can’t help but laugh. “What if someone needs that?”

Haru lets a smile quirk at his lips. “So do you.”

He disinfects the cuts and places bandages over them, then tells Rin when to change them. There’s enough bandages to last through the weekend, but Rin will have to buy more soon. He and Nitori usually make trips on Sunday afternoons to shop at nearby stores, so he’ll be covered.

“You need help, Rin.” Haru traces the lifelines in Rin’s palm with his fingertip.  
  
Rin says, “I know.”


	27. moonstruck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> moonstruck - unable to think or act normally, especially because of being in love.

**January 5th**

 

Haru wakes up to banging on the front door. It’s holidays so they don’t have swim practice, so he can’t be late for anything, so  _ why— _ ?

Rin is standing outside, stomping his feet to shake the snow off of his boots. There hasn’t been a lot, but he’s probably forgotten the appearance of a city in white.

“Let me in, it’s cold,” Rin grumbles. Haru moves so that Rin can pass through.

“Why are you here?” Haru asks as Rin removes his coat. He stops, arm halfway through the sleeve.

“I wanted to see if you’d watch this with me. And I’m not doing anything else.” He hands Haru a DVD case that he’s hidden in his coat. Haru turns it over and reads the back. It’s a documentary about the sea and its creatures.

“Okay.”

 

* * *

 

**January 9th**

 

“My mother made mackerel and I told her you liked it, so she told me to take some to you.”

Haru accepts the plastic container with wide eyes and a happy inhale.

 

* * *

 

**January 16th**

 

“I just saw this and I thought of you.”

He sets the keychain in Haru’s hands. It’s silver with a plastic dolphin attached to it.

“Ah, thanks...”

“No problem.” Rin crosses his arms over his chest and smiles, and Haru is reminded of cats who bring back dead mice to their owners.

He tries to emulate something like that, patting over the soft strands of Rin’s red hair. When he moves his hand away, Rin’s cheeks are tinted pink.

Haru slams the door on him.

 

* * *

 

**January 21st**

 

“I didn’t know if you were mad or something...but I couldn’t think of anything I’d done wrong...so...”

“I’m not mad.” Haru eats another one of the sour candies Rin bought him. Rin nods, settling his back against the movie theatre seat. Rin is home for the weekend, so he’d invited Haru to watch a film with him.

Haru was allowed to pick what they watched. And Rin bought the tickets.

It’s a romantic comedy and Rin doesn’t like it, quirking an eyebrow when the audience laughs. Haru chose it because he wasn’t in the mood for horror or a film for kids. That could wait until Nagisa came around.

Rin leans toward Haru, whispering somewhere around his neck. “I’m going to the bathroom, do you want some food for when I come back?”

Haru bites his bottom lip in thought. “Popcorn? Here, I’ll—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Rin clamps his fingers around Haru’s wrist, from where he’d reached into his jacket pocket for his wallet. “I can pay for it, it’s fine.”

The light from the screen is pale and white, swathing the lines of Rin’s face and making him look younger. “Rin—”

A woman ahead of them hisses. Rin drops Haru’s wrist and moves out of the aisle.

Haru watches as he walks down the stairs. He brings his wrist to his face and looks at where Rin touched him, trying to relive the feeling.

 

* * *

 

**January 25th**

 

They’re the only ones in Samezuka’s locker room after a joint practice. The Samezuka team has already departed to their rooms, and the Iwatobi team usually doesn’t stay as long, having to take the train back home.

“I’ll take you to this burger place,” Rin says, tying his sneaker. Haru has already finished redressing, leaning against the wall.

“Burgers?”

Rin grins down at his laces. “There’s fish there.”

They leave and when they are sitting in the restaurant’s booth, having ordered fish and meat, Haru asks the question.

“Why are you doing all this?”

Rin has been looking past him, but his eyes snap back to Haru. “Eh?”

“All this.” Haru waves his hand at the table. “You bring me food and buy stuff for me.”

Rin's face looks paler. “You’re my friend. Friends take care of each other, right?” He tilts his head to punctuate the question.

Haru’s blue eyes sharpen. “I don’t need to be  _ taken care of _ . I already have Makoto.”

Rin frowns. Haru doesn’t like seeing it. “I ... okay. I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t know that Makoto takes care of me?” He doubts this, since Makoto takes care of everyone.

“No, Makoto takes care of everyone. I mean, I didn’t know that...” He picks up his napkin and runs his thumb over its side. “You know.”

Haru doesn’t know, and his silence portrays it. Rin looks at him before sighing and flopping back in his seat.

“Ah, you don’t know. Fuck it. I didn’t know you and Makoto were dating.”

Haru furrows his brow. Him and Makoto ... a smile tugs at the corner of his own mouth.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have ... Sorry.” He drops the napkin.

“You wouldn’t have what?”

Rin drags his fingers against the black tabletop. “Pursued you. Romantically. But you never seemed ... maybe you didn’t know. Sorry.”  _ When is their food coming _ ?, he thinks, hoping that it’s soon.

He decides to dig himself a bigger hole while he waits. “With the new year... I just felt like I should put more effort into it. Like, trying to figure out if you liked me, or trying to start a relationship, or something. And even if you didn’t like me, I would know, at least. I was just seeking some sort of answer from you.”

“You like me.”

“Yes.”

“And you wanted to date me... Is that why you did all that stuff?”

_ Oblivious. Stupid. Why do I even bother... _ “Yes!”

Their drinks arrive. Rin isn’t looking at him, gazing down at the liquid in his glass.

Before Haru takes a sip, he says, “Makoto and I aren’t dating.”

Rin’s head shoots up.

 

* * *

 

 

**February 1st**

 

“Hey, Haru.” Rin smiles at him. They sit poolside, dipping their legs into the cooling water. “I think I’ve already made a New Year’s resolution for next year. You know, since my last one worked out pretty well. Wanna hear it?” 

Haru kisses him to shut him up. 

  
  



	28. the language of blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follows the events of #26, so references to Rin self-harming. (Yes, now these are related, but I don't see the point in changing the summary, since the rest remain unrelated.)

The language of blood is one that Rin is still learning. His therapist is teaching him, bit by bit.

He decides to tell Ai. One thing he’d told the doctor was that he was afraid of Ai finding out — of feeling betrayed, working himself into anxiety without knowing all of the facts. So before Ai slips out one day, he pats the mattress besides him and waits for his roommate to sit down.

The therapist told him that he was in control of what happened, that he was the only one who could manage his fears.

When Ai gasps over his own imagining of the wounds, Rin lets him. He knows it’s bad. He traces over the lifelines in his own hands, looking down at them while he waits for the fire to die down.

Haru picks him up one weekend and they go out to eat. They stare at each other across the booth, Haru’s eyes full of questions. He reaches out for Rin’s hand while they wait for their food. Rin takes it and finds himself saying,  
  
“It’s not that bad. Like, I don’t want to do it that badly.”

Haru scrapes his teeth over his bottom lip. Rin squeezes his hand and says more.

“I feel like the therapy is doing something.” This is not true. Rin feels his life waste away in that little beige chair.

“I think that things are going to get better.” He’s lying to Haru, why is he lying to Haru?

The worst part of it all, Rin recounts to his therapist, is that Haru had agreed with him. Haru nodded and told Rin that he was “there if you need me.” There’d been a smile on his lips for a quick second before steaming plates were lowered onto the table. Rin wants to live in that smile. He wishes Haru would wear it more—

“And what is your relationship with him?”

Her voice brings him back to the chair and the room. Rin stops tracing patterns over the cushioned arm of his seat.  
  
He wants to unlearn the language of blood, lose it all bit by bit.


	29. vengeful ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haru's death doesn't have much detail, so that's why I didn't add the "Major Character Death" tag.

The first time Rin brings a new lover to bed, Haru watches them.

It's been four years, but Rin hasn’t left their cottage by the sea. When Haru still lived there and when Haru still lived, they took every dinner to their patio, weather permitting. The two would look over the stone wall to the line where the coast touched the waves. Rin loved the breeze, would close his eyes to it, and Haru liked the way it moved through his lover’s hair, pushing strands away.

That all came to an end with the train accident. No one expected it to happen, but once Haru felt the car veer, he’d closed his eyes and wished for Rin.

And now he had him, or at least the vision of Rin pushing up a man’s shirt with shaking fingers, meeting his mouth in kiss after kiss.

He sits on a ceiling rafter in their bedroom, but it’s just Rin’s now. Everything had become just Rin’s, like the clawfoot bathtub they’d picked out, but Rin just showers now. The refrigerator, devoid of any kind of fish. The one drawer full of Haru’s things, like the cellphone he’d wished he’d taken with him so he could send Rin a final _I love you_ before boarding.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

The man has dark hair and light eyes. He’s been over the house before, always making comments about the beauty of the view. Rin never answered that with anything. Haru believes that each time, he reflects on the reason why’d he’d decided to live near the water — for Haru, always for Haru.

“No, I want to.” The smile that Rin gives the man is steadier, and the man returns to kissing Rin’s neck.

Haru thinks this is for him, too, the sight of Rin pinned to different sheets and underneath a different man. A way to tell him that he should’ve been more grateful. He should’ve said _I love you_ more. He should’ve cooked less mackerel and he should’ve said that they didn’t have to live near the ocean, take trains into the city and leave each other every time, before Haru left for the last time.

He closes his eyes and listens as Rin’s breathing grows heavier.

* * *

Haru lays on the couch in the living room. He drapes his legs over the arm, back against the cushions. He listens as the man walks into the kitchen. A counter and a dining table separates them, but Haru only needs to hear.

The man fumbles to make coffee, cursing at every step. At one point, he groans and rubs at his eyes. Haru can hear the way the skin of his fingers rubs away the grogginess. He remembers the sound of the man clasping Rin’s hips, his grip on a washcloth as he wiped their night away from between Rin’s legs.

He hears Rin’s steps over the hardwood floor, then Rin opening the fridge. His body leans forward as he sticks his head into the cool air. He finds eggs and vegetables, sets them on the counter, and slams the door shut.

“Hey,” he says, and Haru doesn’t hear him wrap his arms around the man’s shoulders. He bites at his bottom lip.

The man grunts. Rin leans against the refrigerator. “You alright? You didn’t get enough sleep?”

The man laughs in response, setting his half-full mug of coffee on the counter behind him. “I’m fine, but no fucking way did I get enough sleep.”

“But we got...” Rin cranes around the man to check the clock above the stove. “Nine hours. I missed my jog.”

The man picks up his mug. “Yeah but ... I had these terrible nightmares.”

Rin opens the carton of eggs. “What kind of nightmares?” His voice still holds interest. Haru wonders if he is thinking about the nights Haru held him as he saw his father’s face in his sleep.

“It was really weird ... I was walking out of your house into the ocean. It was dark. There was a mist. A kid was there.”

“A kid?” Children didn’t frequent the beach and the attached water. Elderly couples lived on either sides of Rin’s estate. And the summer homes were usually filled with young couples who rented just for a place to fuck.

“It wasn’t a kid, now that I’m thinking about it. He was small though. Black hair. And these really weird eyes.”

Rin cracks an egg. “Blue?”

The man lifts his lips from the rim of the mug. “Huh?”

“Nothing. Eh, so that was it? Sounds  _scary_.”

Rin matches Haru’s smile. The man shifts from one bare foot to the other.

“No, that wasn’t it. Suddenly, I was underwater, and he was on top of me, just pushing me down. I was drowning. I kept feeling all this pain in my chest. I swore I felt it when I woke up. And I felt like, paralyzed, for a minute. I couldn’t sleep after that. That’s the first nightmare I’ve had since I was a kid.”

Haru can hear Rin’s fingers curl around the carton of eggs. “Well, I’m sorry you had to deal with that. You want an omelet?”

“Sure, thanks,” the man says, sipping at his coffee again. When he finishes, he says, “But I swear your house is haunted.”

Rin pauses, holding a red pepper. He laughs. “I doubt it.”

“No, seriously. Next time we’ll just do this at my place.”  
  
The telltale pause says _everything_ to Haru. He can’t stop grinning. In the next second, he’s down at the beach, looking into the water. He doesn’t need to hear Rin’s excuse, him fumbling over words and breakfast. He smiles at the ocean and the ocean smiles back.


	30. sell my soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of previous chapter.

The choice was told to him through fangs. Spat at him through sharp teeth and a mouthful of saliva. Haru can feel the anxiety of vibrating souls, his own rattling in his chest. Worry hovers over a young woman with a hand over her pregnant stomach. There isn’t a soul there — she is probably here to negotiate something.

Before he meets with the keeper, he sights someone in another line. She’s wearing a school uniform, the sleek line of her hair running down her back. She meets his eyes, black ringed around one of hers, and Haru remembers that she sat across from him on that train.

“Next,” the keeper says, and Haru steps forward.

 

* * *

 

Rin sits in his usual chair on the patio, staring out at the waves. He has his chin in his hand, elbow propped up on the table. He cooked steak and it sits on a plate beside him, but he hasn’t touched it, the fork and knife lying dormant on the platter. He is the perfect picture of a pining lover, and maybe Haru is one too. He sits cross-legged on the stone wall, back to the water for once as he watches Rin.

Rin’s gaze can’t snag on his invisible form. He’ll never be able to see him. Haru denied that for the both of them.

The choice was told to him through a mouth whistling with spit. Haru could close his eyes and he’d be born again. He could’ve been a heartless businessman divorcing from his family. Or an unfortunate homeless person touched by sudden amnesia.

Those were his only two options, the only two people to which he could sell his soul. The catch was that he would be born somewhere far away from Rin. Instead of Rin’s lips on his, his mouth would be filled with the words of someone else’s language. If he wanted to see Rin again, he would have to make his way back to Japan, which was just the first part of the struggle, as he’d also have to make Rin fall in love with him again.

He watches Rin scrape his bottom lip with his top teeth, blinking in thought.

And it’s just another thing that makes him want to sell his soul. Forget haunting their home as Rin fucked man after man. He misses being able to pull on Rin’s bottom lip so he’d stop teasing it. He misses dinners with Rin and dipping into the ocean beside him, the two swimming in parallel lines.  
  
Rin sighs, shaking his head. He stands and takes his dinner inside. Haru sees him behind the glass patio door as he slides it closed.


	31. whispers in the wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based off of a Junjou Romantica episode.

Rin hunches over the brick wall of the balcony. Haru follows the line of his suit jacket to where it disappears beneath his hair, longer now that he’s grown it out. Rin looks good from every angle.

It doesn’t do any good to think about this now. He slips on his sandals that sit by the door and walks over to his lover. He folds his arms on top of the wall and looks over at the author. Rin’s cigarette dangles from his fingers and the city streets below them both. The smoke mists over the purpling sky.

Rin’s face is hidden by his hair. He straightens and pushes off the wall, bringing his cigarette to his lips.

“I’m sorry,” Haru says.

Rin moves his hair away from his face, then arches a brow at Haru. He sighs through his cigarette. “It’s fine.”

“No,” Haru says. “It’s not fine. I’m apologizing.”

Rin looks at the skyscrapers, black pillars jutting through the purple. “Ah, well...”

“You should know that.” Haru can’t even turn his head, pretending to be fixated with the way cars skid against their streets. A gust of wind slips between them and smothers Haru’s words. “You’re the only one ... I love.”

 _There, I said it_. He turns, satisfied and ready to walk back in. He feels a hand at his shoulder and sighs, letting Rin move him so they face each other.

Rin is smiling around his cigarette, sharp teeth glinting. He removes it with his free hand, the other still on Haru’s shoulder. “I didn’t catch that, sorry. Do you mind repeating that?”

Haru freezes, then rolls his eyes, breaking away from Rin’s grip.

“It’s just so windy!” Rin calls after him. Haru slams the balcony door shut, dipping his head to hide his own smile.


	32. lost in a maze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There might be some more autumn-inspired fills in here. It depends on the prompts.

“Those fuckers,” Rin says with a roll of his eyes. He puts his hand to his brow to shield his eyes from the sun. He’s standing on the bridge in the middle of the hay bale maze. 

Coming into this, he didn’t think he’d be the one up on the bridge. Momo would get tired of the whole thing or Ai would grow overwhelmed, diminutive compared to the stacks of hay surrounding them.

But no, Momo tugged on Ai’s hand and they’d disappeared around a corner and then they just disappeared. With the map, which they weren’t really following anyway. And now Rin is so stuck, and he can see the end of the maze but he can’t see an orange or a gray head of hair, and he just wants to get back to Samezuka. Why did he even agree to this? He even forgot his cellphone.

Someone bumps into him, and he turns to see who it is. Hopefully it’s Ai or Momo—

“Sorry,” a boy says. He’s around Rin’s age, black hair and blue eyes. Pretty cute, so Rin tells him he doesn’t have to be sorry. He looks back at the hay and pretends that he’s still looking for something, just so he can stay around the other boy for a while.

The boy edges forward on tiptoes, then sighs when he sees how far they are.

“You lost?” Rin says, and he probably shouldn’t have asked, since it’s obvious.

“Yes,” the boy says. “I don’t know where Makoto is.”

One of his hands tugs at the hem of his own hoodie, and Rin notices that the sky is starting to grow darker. The boy’s eyes seem wide and frightened.

“You wanna try to find the end together?”

The other furrows his brow in thought, before nodding. 

“I’m Rin.”

“Haru.”  
  
They leave the bridge to walk among the hay again.


	33. fated to die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can't take credit for this idea — in "Matched" by Ally Condie, they have scheduled human euthanization when a person reaches a certain age. This is not graphic; it's more centered around emotions.

Haru remembers when Rin's hair was the color of the wine they shared. In the hotel room that they shared while they travelled with the team that they shared. Now, they are sharing this too.     
  
They share a final grip, wrinkled hands clutching each other. Haru dips down for a kiss, soft and slow, lips lingering before he backs away. They share a final glance. Every time they look at each other, it tells more stories than a scrapbook or mutual friend or even a biographer could. This is the last time Rin will live in Haru’s eyes. 

They let go of each other’s hands. Their last shared breath is the other’s name. 

Haru extends his arm and tries to grip Rin’s hand again, but he feels a gloved hand clamp down on his forearm. “Nanase, this wasn’t discussed.”

Rin starts to cry, twin streams of tears painting his cheeks. His body heaves with each jagged sob that spills out of his mouth. Haru can’t take his eyes off of the way he looks so small.

He hears his surname again before he’s pushed into the hall. He closes his eyes as he’s led by the hands.

The doctor clearing his throat raises Haru’s own head. He plasters on a smile when Haru looks at him. “We can arrange a grief counselor if that’s something that you need,” the doctor says. “But it was Matsuoka’s time to go—”  
  
“That won’t be necessary,” Haru says. He doesn’t know which of the man’s statements he’s referring to. One of Haru’s hands feels over the other. Rin touched him there and Rin will never touch him again. He feels his way along the skin.


	34. american psycho

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based off ["Jet Pack Blues"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtgiP95ikIE) by Fall Out Boy on their album "American Beauty/American Psycho."

Haru exits the grocery store, the plastic of the shopping bag handle twining with his fingers. It’s a short walk back to campus, but it will be a gray one. Fog has snaked its way into the city, decreasing visibility and plugging the air with heat. Haru feels his own hair grow heavy with sweat. It’s not difficult to determine why there’s only one other person on the side of the street.

Haru’s hoodie is thin, but there’s nothing he can do about it. He could pull up his hood, but water is beginning to drip from the sky. He enjoys the way the rain kisses the nape of his neck, the line of his jaw. The air is beginning to carry breezes, making it even better.

The town seems to be populated by ghosts. Haru remembers it in different ways with different people. His old swim team visited and they ate dish after dish at the nearby fish place. His father visited and bought him a watch from one of the boutiques, even though they both knew that Haru would never wear it. And he remembers Rin teasing him about the fountain in the town square, going shopping with him just to disappear and return with tiny trinkets and sweet candy. Rin, eyes always alight even though downtown never had much to offer them. Even though Haru just nodded and never seemed to smile. Rin brought the light with him, made every street shine.

Haru hasn’t seen him since he’d come to pick up his things. Just a few pairs of jammers, a schoolbook or two. Rin’s roommate never liked Haru and now he had a reason. He proved everyone right about him.

Haru watches clouds slip into the sky and decides that he doesn’t need to think about it now. A June-September romance, is that a thing? He doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter.

Once he steps onto campus, he notices that the sky has shifted into dark gray, preparing itself for nightfall. The streetlights flicker into casting blue light. It seems as if someone has flipped on the rain with a switch. It drops in slow sheets, and Haru takes a moment to move to the grass near the sidewalk. He closes his eyes and lets his head fall back, enjoying the way the water snakes down his neck, past his collarbone.

He rights himself, ready to leave again. But then he has to blink, make sure that the fog hasn’t started to play games with his vision. 

Rin’s eyes meet his from where he’s a couple of meters away. His back is parallel with the streetlight he's leaning against. He almost looks like a ghost in the baby blue. His eyes have those underlying dark circles that Haru sees in his own reflection every time.

“Haru.” Rin’s voice is small, competing with the rain’s hissing.

And Haru crosses the concrete, stands and tilts his head a little to look up. Rin parts his lips to say something, then closes his mouth again. His hair is darker from the water, but he makes no motion to pull up the hoodie of his black jacket.

“What are you doing here?” He finds himself searching for signs of Rin's decay, something similar to the way he feels inside. 

Rin’s gaze skims over Haru’s cheek before looking past him. “I was just going to go into the city to get dinner.”

He nods to Haru’s shopping bag. “Uh, what'd you get?”

_Why is he asking?_ But they know why. Haru looks down at his fingers curled in the handle. They turn red with the weight that they have to hold. “Warm mackerel. Spices.”

They stand in silence, two dominoes who are both unwilling to fall. Haru’s eyes survey the path ahead of him, the way the concrete squares fade into gravel.

Rin speaks first. “Haru, ah. This is probably not the right time.”

He starts to toy with the lapels of his jacket. “Are you sure about ... what happened? If you are, that’s fine, I’m not mad. I just. I don’t know.”

Rin’s arms fall back to his sides. Teeth as sharp as a shark’s gnaw at his bottom lip. He shifts from foot to foot. Haru drops his gaze to Rin’s chest, the way that the jacket’s fabric stretches across. He wishes he could be there. He wishes his hands could be there. “Rin." He wants to make sure he says this right, well enough so that he doesn't have to elaborate. "We ... talked about this.”

There is a moment of quiet before Rin sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck. He dips his head. Tiny droplets of water fly from his hair. “You’re right. Sorry, it was stupid.” He laughs, but it is more of a rasp. “Sorry, Haru.”

Haru wants to tell him he doesn’t need to apologize.  _ He  _ was the one who did it all wrong. But Rin rips away from the streetlight and begins walking in the other direction, towards the street where Haru came from.  
  
Haru watches, the fingers of his other hand twitching. He turns around and faces the path. He releases a sigh into the air, which grows colder with every passing moment. He forges ahead.


	35. morning regrets

Haru vows to never tell Nagisa this story. He would press Haru for every detail.   

_What did you say after he bought you a drink? Haru, was he charming? Why did you agree to go up with him? Was he good at sex? Who topped? Oh my gosh, you topped Matsuoka?!_

He slips off the bed and stands, rolling his shoulder. Matsuoka rolls onto his other side, as he’s lost the cushion of Haru’s body. 

Haru catches glimpses of Tokyo’s skyline as he roots around for his clothes. He sees Matsuoka's too, a button-down and jeans, and remember how they got to the part where he took them off.

Matsuoka's fingers fumbled with the key card as Haru hooked his arms around his waist and leant up to kiss at his neck. Once they had the door open and closed, Matsuoka grabbed at Haru, kissing him with an open mouth. His hands felt all over Haru's ass, squeezing at him and moving along his jeans. He'd kicked off his shoes so hard they hit the wall. Haru did the same and Matsuoka caged him against the door with his body, his mouth. 

Matsuoka kissed across his jaw and down his neck, then he moved back to Haru's lips. They finished kissing with a wet noise and shared panting. "I'm just gonna get a condom." 

Haru nodded, feeling the sting of where Matsuoka bit over his pulse point. Matsuoka dug his hand into the drawer of his nightstand and Haru watched the way the lights of the city curled around his body. He returned with the foil packet, pressing it into Haru's hand and telling him to open it. With a grin, he unbuttoned Haru's pants, fingers brushing against the bulge in his jammers, which made it a little difficult to tear the packet open.  

But Haru did it, keeping the condom in his hand. Matsuoka hooked his fingers around the waistband of Haru's swimsuit and burst out with laughter. 

Haru felt his face redden, but Matsuoka just chuckled to himself. WIth slightly shaking fingers, he pulled the jammers down and the condom down Haru's cock. He followed the latex with his mouth and Haru threw his head back, hitting it against the door. 

Haru looks at the jammers in his hand and sighs, shaking his head. He pulls them on, then his pants, which rest nearby. Next comes his shirt, draped over a nearby chair since Matsuoka threw it to the side. Then his socks, which are still in his shoes. He reties those and leaves the hotel room without looking back. 

He sees his own reflection in the elevator's chrome and touches at his neck. Luckily, no one in the lobby recognizes the man that an Olympic gold medalist brought upstairs last night. He weaves through the people milling about the lobby and darts across the street.  

There's a Starbucks right across from the hotel, and he waits in line for a pick-me-up before he has to find a train. Someone in the other line is reading a newspaper. Haru reads across the headline - _Olympic Champion Returns Home_.  Rin smiles underneath, eyes closed to the overwhelming feeling of victory, gold glinting around his neck. 

He thinks about the way Matsuoka will wake up, to a cold bed and less clothes. His first morning back in Japan, the morning after he'd sent that smile to Haru, sparkling eyes and sharp teeth. 

 _Fuck_.  

"Next," the barista calls, and Haru steps up. He orders something sweet and then reaches into his back pocket for his wallet.  

The hotel room's key card is pressed against his credit card. Haru looks down at it like he's already received his coffee, and they got the order wrong. 

"Sir?" The barista's voice sounds like they're frowning.

He looks up.  

He returns to Rin's room with two coffees. Rin is sitting against the headboard, chest still bare. He stares at the phone in his hand without doing anything until Haru steps into the bedroom. 

His face lights up and he sends Haru that same bar smile. Haru thought it was a just a " _Wanna make out?_ " smile. But maybe, _maybe_ , it was an " _I wanna get to know you_ " smile. Along with the meaning of the first hypothesis. 

"Putting your card in my wallet wasn't a good idea," Haru says. He hands Rin a coffee. Rin drops the phone into his lap and takes the cup. Haru ordered mostly black with a bit of sugar and milk.  

"Maybe," Rin says, grin still present before he takes a sip. After swallowing, he waves the cup at Haru. "But it worked, right?" 

Haru swears he feels his heart pulse in his _fingertips_. 


	36. blackout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to write.

The lighter’s click resounds in the room. Haru touches the flame to wick, casting the room into light. Rin watches gold smooth across the features of his face.

“When do you think the power will come back on?” Rin asks.

Haru shrugs. He pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them. Rin wants to grab at his arm and bring him closer. He knows that Haru shivers from this cold.

He keeps his hands in his lap. He turns them over, glancing at the pink skin over his knuckles.

“I didn’t mean to yell,” Rin whispers. He looks at his palms, the lines that divide. Haru glances up at him through a sheet of black hair.

“I know.”

Then he buries his face between his knees. Rin hears a clock tick somewhere. He tries to match his breathing to it. His heart is beating too fast.

“I’m really sorry,” he repeats. Everything is too dark. His words are starting not to make sense, even though they should. They sound like there’s wind in them, a howl without howling.

“I believe you,” Haru says. They lock eyes, shadows shielding the rest of their faces. They stare at the candle, the way the flame wavers. Outside, the rain flings itself at the windowpanes. Haru shudders along with the house. 

“Are you cold?” Rin asks. He holds his own hands. He twines his fingers together.

Haru exhales. “No.”  
  
Rin nods. Wax trickles down the candlestick. Pearl droplets puddle in a black tray.


	37. kiss like a punch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this took a turn.

The tiled floor is scuffed from shoes, lined with rubber smudges. Families scurry around each other. Lovers take too long to part, untangling limbs and leaving lingering kisses, hoping that they’ll last.

Haru knows he’s as valuable as a photograph, a sentence in a text. Rin can crumple him up, delete him, toss him out whenever he wants. He can fade and he can disappear. He doesn’t have to be real.

“Hey, Haru,” Rin says. 

Haru’s head tilts towards him, a satellite falling into its planet’s orbit.

Rin’s eyes stay on his. “Let’s say we never meet again.” The tone of his voice is matter-of-fact, like he’s pitching something to a sales team. 

He sets his hands on Haru’s shoulders and bends his head so he can look him straight in the eyes. Haru looks back. His eyes hold no tears, and neither do Rin’s.

“Would you miss me?”

Haru feels a smile play at his mouth. He  _ tsk _ s and glances at the people behind Rin. They talk to each other or they talk into phones. They huddle, hug, and break apart. 

He wants Rin’s arms around him. He wants to be caged in.

And as if Rin can read his mind, he embraces Haru. He nudges their faces together and suddenly they’re kissing. 

Rin’s lips are soft and the kiss is short, but Haru still feels like he’s had the wind knocked out of him. Like he’s just finished a race and he’s popped out from under the water, still panting as he reaches the light.

Haru stumbles back on unsteady feet. Rin is smiling; it looks so bright on him. “Goodbye, Haru.”  
  
He turns and he’s dragging his wheeled suitcase behind him. Haru watches him go, red hair a pinprick of color.


	38. do you believe in miracles

It isn’t Haru to ask the question. Haru doesn’t need to ask.

 

* * *

 

“Do you believe in miracles?” Makoto asks Rin, something bleeding into his voice. He clutches at the railing of Haru’s bed. Haru feels the warmth of his body as he hovers over him.

It’s stifling, under these blankets and Makoto always so close.

He hears the  _ snick _ of Dr. Matsuoka snapping on plastic gloves. “No. But I believe in science.”

He fits his hands around Haru’s leg and feels over the cast. Makoto is saying something and Dr. Matsuoka responds in a low voice. Haru can’t hear what they’re saying. He can only take in the sparks of pain that sizzle through him, red-hot and electrifying. 

“Nanase, I know you’re awake.”

Haru blinks one eye open, than the other. Even though he’s been awake for a while, he still has to clear away the crust. Dr. Matsuoka looks up his body and smiles, gloved hands still laying on his leg. Haru bites his bottom lip.

“Oh, Haru, I’m glad you’re okay.”

And that’s Makoto’s hand on his shoulder, curling around and pressing down with his fingertips. Dr. Matsuoka arches an eyebrow and Haru feels hot. He knows what this looks like, and it is what it is.

Dr. Matsuoka slips away from Haru, settling his hands at his sides again. He clears his throat, but Makoto is still probing him with wide green eyes.

“Makoto,” Haru says, and that’s all it takes for Makoto to step back. He looks at Haru as if to say,  _ You know why I’m concerned _ , and he  _ does _ , Haru _knows_ , but they need to proceed with it all.

He glances back to Dr. Matsuoka. “What about being able to swim?”

The man takes a breath.


	39. back in black

_ What’s next for your career? Do you plan to return to Iwatobi? How has your team reacted to your rehab stint? Are you returning to your team? _

Rin pulls the fabric of his charcoal-colored coat around himself, tighter and tighter, trying to construct some sort of shield. He knows the particles of light from camera flashes will fall through the holes and stitches, illuminate the parts of his body that he doesn’t want anyone to see. The water wouldn’t bat him away but these people do. They shove Rin towards his car and he has no choice but to follow the trickle of bodies.

His bodyguard Makoto swings open the door. Rin slips into the backseat before the door is slammed shut. He turns his back to the people and their cameras and their shoving so close that it makes the car shake. 

Makoto gets into the passenger’s seat before closing the door just as hard as he’d done before. Haru slams down on the horn and people scatter. He starts to drive, parting the sea of people. At least they’re smart enough to get out of the way.

Rin doesn’t need more scandals on his hands.

“People have no sense of respect,” Makoto says, and Rin grunts. He often gets into this conversation while they’re into the car together. They’re both still shocked about the number of people, so it’s understandable.

“Unfortunately,” Haru replies.

Rin picks his head up. Usually his driver doesn’t get into these conversations, preferring to turn the music up and remain quiet. Hearing Haru’s voice is weird.

Something in Rin’s body welcomes it, though. He feels something in himself soften. He’s listening now, fully tuned in, a result of the rarity of Haru’s words.

“When are they going to get it?” Haru’s voice holds a sharp edge. Makoto looks over to him, furrowing his brow. “Life’s not all about the money, the drama. They should leave you be. They always say that they care, but they don’t.”

Rin shrugs. He looks out the window, the shops of the main street zipping by.

“Did I say something wrong?” Haru’s voice sounds different now, and he glances at Rin over his shoulder before refocusing on the road.

Rin touches fingertips to the glass of the window. He smiles. “No.” 

He catches Haru’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Haru quirks a small smile before affixing his gaze to the path in front of them.  
  
Rin’s always felt safe in this car. He draws circles onto the window.


	40. big bang theory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to fanfic writer Wikipedia for the parts in parentheses.

_(concluded that galaxies are drifting apart)_ :

 

Rin’s hands are warm. His fingers splay where they’re curled around Haru’s jaw. He holds his hand out like a chandelier. His other fists at the fabric of Haru’s hoodie, bunched up at his shoulder.

When they stop kissing, Haru feels like the lights in the room have faded, like everything’s stopped living as a rush of colour. They sit together on the couch, facing each other. But Rin’s face is pale, and his hands shake as he stands to slip away. They fumble over the fabric of his coat as he throws it over his shoulders.   
  
They are steady when Rin looks at Haru and says: “This was a mistake, Haru. I’m sorry.”

The tremor has made its way to his voice. Haru only looks at him, still and poised, legs folded underneath his own body. He’s glad for his own weight, a way to keep himself bouldered down to the leather of his couch. He holds himself away from Rin and the fire he feels, a result of the explosion, their bodies tearing apart.  


* * *

 

 _(the hypothesis of an expanding universe)_ :

 

He coughs, dry and vibrating from his throat. He puts a fist to his chest and pounds out the air.

The boy in the bathroom turns the water on. Haru hears it from behind the door, the frigid stream hitting the sink’s porcelain basin. He blinks away the wetness that’s gathered in his eyes, from the coughing and the force behind the boy’s hands.

His scalp feels raw from fingernails digging into his skull, fingers burrowing in his dark hair. It was fine but his touch hovered too close. Haru perches on the edge of the mattress. He passes a hand over the hair at his nape.  
  
He’s reminded of Rin’s fingers, held out like the bars of a cage but meaning nothing like that at all.


	41. exit wounds

“Not again.”

The words come out cracked. They’ve slid through the dust of a dried throat. 

Haru blinks his eyes open. He turns his head to see Rin, who isn’t looking back at him. Instead, his gaze strung to the curtain separating their beds from the door.

“What do you mean?”

He already has an idea in his head: the way that Rin will look at him for the next few weeks, eyes scanning over the frame of his face like he's trying to take in everything again. And then once more.

"This can't keep happening. Getting shot?" 

It doesn’t hurt as much as the first time, but what Rin’s saying stings him. He’d tried, listening for all the warehouse’s songs, doing everything the agency taught him to do. "I  _ tried _ ," Haru presses. 

"I  _ know _ ," Rin rasps back. He's directed his gaze at Haru. "Not blaming you." 

Haru feels himself sink into the pillow and he closes his eyes. "Good." 

He opens them again and Rin is smiling in that way that means he wishes he could reach across the space. Hold Haru's hand, rub over the knuckles, press their palms together, and squeeze. Haru wishes for it too, but that day isn't today. Silence except for the beeping of their heart monitors. They’ve fallen into the same step. And then: 

"Hey," Rin calls. Haru is wide awake and staring.

Rin says, “We’ll talk about this later, okay?”

Haru sighs and feels the exhale hit the pillow. “Yeah.”  
  
Rin smiles and he smiles back, something humming over the beeping.


	42. inside the sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if it's "chabudai," but that's all Google gave me.  
> Hmm, I think I'm a sucker for the "waking up after a one(?) night stand" thing.

(1)

 

“Hey,” Rin says, all soft and hushed, something calm on a Saturday morning. He sits on the edge of Haru’s mattress, already dressed in a tank top and jeans and a splash of golden light from the window.

“Rin?” Haru blinks the sleep from his eyes. His fingertips flit to the surrounding skin, where crust sits in a thin layer.

“Do you want to get breakfast? There’s this new place that opened downtown.”

“Mm.” He focuses his vision towards the ceiling — looking at Rin now is  _ embarrassing _ . After last night and their collage over the sheets and the damp press of Rin’s eyelashes over his collarbone. But really, he should be embarrassed for every self he’s had since his childhood, like the smallest Haru with caught breath and glittering eyes at  _ Romantic, right? _

His thoughts are embarrassing, the tips of his ears touched by flame. “I need a bath.”

Rin huffs out a little laugh, warm and low. “Fine, I’ll be right back.”

He stands from the bed and walks to the door. Haru peels himself from his own mattress to stop ruminating on the loss of warmth.

 

(2)

 

When he leaves his bath and enters his dining room, he’s met with a spread on the chabudai, and a perfume of dough and citrus. Rin sits at the other end, pushing a small plate of fried mackerel across the tabletop.

There’s cream cheese smeared onto a few bagel halves, and grilled sausage links under the sheet of a fried egg. Two mugs of coffee dark and strong, two bowls of steaming white rice, and a plate of glistening orange slices.

Haru makes his way to the table, sits, and grabs at the plate of mackerel. Rin grins, and then reaches for an orange slice, replacing the sight of his teeth with the color.

They eat in silence for a while, until Haru rests his chopsticks on his empty plate of mackerel. He looks up. “You didn’t have to buy this stuff.”

Rin pokes at the fried egg with the end of a chopstick. “Yeah, I did. By the time you got out of the tub...”

He trails off, finally picking up the fried egg. Haru decides to go for the bagel, hand poised over the plate, when:

“No, you really didn’t.” He slips his hand into his lap. “I’ll pay you back.”

Rin waves his free hand, mouth full of egg. Haru picks up the bagel.

“Thank you,” he says, before taking his first bite.  
  
Rin’s eyes dart to him before he smiles and swallows. Outside, the cats unfurl from the circles they’ve slept in. Birds set off skyward, wind tunneling its way underneath their wings. Branches wave in the summer breeze, showing off their flowered bracelets. The bread is freshly baked and still warm.


	43. valor or crown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for non-graphic torture.

**VALOR**

 

The blade, silver, Rin’s throat, white. The line of the blade tapering into its sharpest point. The skin of Rin’s neck sloping into his chin and jawline.

Haru watches, wrists bound and raw. Bile builds in a wall at the back of his throat. He wants to cough out, _you don’t have to, never had to_ , but that’s such an insult to a soldier.

The language is one that they don’t know. Rin closes his eyes at the spray of saliva, the beads dribbling down his cheeks.

 

**OR**

 

The wheat is crushed beneath Haru’s thighs. Rin somehow looks like he belongs in this field: a stray flower popping its head over a gilded sea. Haru weaves his fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. Damp with sweat, they both are.

Panting in this heat, they both are. Haru hears his own heartbeat, like the slap of keys in a knapsack. The metallic clang, each thin key crashing against another.

Dusk is coming down on them, snaking through the village with a purpling body. Haru keeps kissing Rin because he tastes like the sea.

 

**CROWN**

 

The cobblestone path is rough underneath Haru’s feet. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” he whispers, consonants rushing along with the wind. “I’ve never had a...servant...”

Rin smiles, cheeks almost as bright as his hair. He’s fire-red: Haru wants to reach out and warm himself.  
  
“Teammate,” Rin says. He turns his head, gaze skipping past the other houses. “If it makes you feel better. You can call me your teammate.”


	44. lingerie

He’s not na **i** ve enough to say that his body is as built as Rin’s, that he possesses the same set of rippling abs. Or hipbones that are just as sharp, like they would bruise if you brushed against them the wrong way.

Haru’s shorter and smaller and a little leaner. But he’s just built a different way, and that’s fine, as long as he can swim with this body.

He’s just not short and small enough for this to look good instead of ... what it is.

“It looks bad,” Haru says.

Rin frowns. It looks like the ends of his hair droop along with it. “Haru, no, it doesn’t.”

Haru sighs. He arches an eyebrow at his reflection. At least there’s _one_ man in the room who agrees with him. “Rin. It looks...”

He turns in the mirror, the _lingerie_ moving along with him. Here, he can see how the elastic waistband sits on his hips, the splay of knit diamonds over his skin. He doesn’t know how to describe the panties: they look like a fishnet, black and clinging to him. But Rin already thought of this when he bought them.

He can imagine Rin venturing into the store, passing pastel bras weighed down by frills. Or sheer black numbers with less fabric than any swimsuit out there.

Just imagining it is enough. “Horrible,” he says.

Rin hefts his hands onto his hips and smiles big. “I think you look good.”

“Good? It looks like I’m wearing a hairnet around my—"  
  
“ _Haru_!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My new Tumblr URL is [fiveyen](http://fiveyen.tumblr.com/), if you want to check that out.
> 
> Also! Some people have been sending prompts, and while I follow the prompts laid out by the challenge, I can try and incorporate those into future chapters. So feel free (no pun intended) to send those!


	45. choir boys

The unravelling: the inked dash of the tie, sleeves collapsing behind him, hanging like a bird’s tired wings. Unmarked skin smoothed over sharp bones. Blue eyes like sand at the bottom of the ocean, dyed by the water above.

Cheeks glazed over with pink, warm to the touch. Sweat gathering in the clavicle, salted and warm under the tongue. The parting of lips for a different kind of song: lower, gathering in the chest and fighting its way from the throat. Gasps tapering off into one name, the same one, over and over again.

He arches off the sheets in one move that seems synchronized: head jerking back, hips rising at the same time. He shudders like his chest is going to cave in. He lifts himself up as if he’s heard his cue in a song. He’s never looked better, light sprawling in every crease. He looks like he’s glowing; he’s reverberating the song strung between them. Here, he doesn't look real. 

Fingers scrabbling on the sheets, fingertips tunneling into the fabric. The live wire to the rest of him, cupped by a sweat-slicked hand. The trickling onto the trembling palm, the fill, a hot rush. He’s gone after that, still heaving. Fatigue sluices over his body, hovers over his skin before sinking through.  
  
He redresses, wraps himself in the fabric. He slides the window open, draws himself out onto the fire escape. Smile sent over a shoulder, a quirk of bitten lips. Dropping off the grated step into the night. Bicycle wheels flattening grass. Each strand is greyed from the waning moon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr: [fiveyen](http://fiveyen.tumblr.com/)


	46. neon jungle

He’s not sure what he thought this would be.

There’s neon everywhere: lining the bar, glinting off the blue bottles behind the glass. Every person is wearing a bracelet, green and pink and yellow halos swimming around the wrist. In the darkness, everyone is the same person. Just another warm body, another brush of skin across the fingertip. Another laugh, syllables scattered across the pulsing music, some noises swallowed by the sharp notes. Another catch of eyes before the person is long gone.

He almost likes it, being no one here. Watching one body writhe against another, inked forms blurring in a tangled mass. No one is here to judge him, to say anything about how he hovers around the crowd.

He’s leaning against the wall, his right side pressed to it, and he almost doesn’t feel the hand at his hip. There’s so many people here, so many that everything starts to mean nothing. It doesn’t matter, the person who frames him, swallows him with height and muscle and power. The solid rock of a strong body. The slight pressure of something hard: he can feel it through the layers of swimsuit and shorts.

But what does it matter? He closes his eyes to it, though, knowing that no one can see him. The clutch to his hip isn’t too hard, just a grip over his shirt and waistband, another way of announcing a presence. 

It’s almost like the ocean. Settling into the waves, letting it take you where it wants to go. He moves along with the person, letting himself coast over the water, the steady bob up and down.

There’s the scrape of sharp teeth over his sweat-soaked nape. It won’t mark. But it startles him, makes him quake in the lessening hold.

And then the stranger slips away, converging into the crowd again without a glance back.


	47. snake preachers

“It’s like touching a snake. You know, like those people in churches who do that stuff? They act like they know what they’re doing so everyone believes they have some special ... power or something.”

“I don’t believe that,” Rin says. He has one hand fisted into the bottom of his blazer. The fabric moves with each clench of his fingers.

His voice — so monotone when he says this, and Haru feels the hope fill his chest.

“I’m not saying you do,” the kid says. Rin’s lab partner, or something. “I’m just telling you not to make a mistake.”

He fixes Rin with one final glare before pivoting on his heel. Rin closes his eyes and sighs.

From behind the wall Haru hides behind, he lets out a sigh of his own. Smaller. Quieter.

 

* * *

 

They first meet in the library. Haru pretends he doesn’t hear the chatter of the main room sneak through gaps in the shelves. He pretends the laughs and gasps don’t surround him where he sits on the carpet, back to a row of books. No one can get him here: that is, until someone taps at his thigh with the toe of their sneaker.

Haru looks up from his book on dolphins. It’s Rin Matsuoka, red hair and eyes and all. Haru feels his cheeks reflect the same shade.

“Excuse me,” Rin says, amusement in his tone. Haru draws his knees to his chest, and Rin cuts in front of him, stepping towards an array of shark books. The characters on the back of his Samezuka swim jacket shimmer golden in the light.

“Are you laughing at me?” Rin asks, but he doesn’t sound mad. One of Haru’s hands flies to his own mouth — he _had_ laughed, almost without noticing. Rin glances over his shoulder at him, his fingers on the spine of _Close to Shore_.

“You’re the one reading about sharks,” Haru says. It’s just a surprise, the swim team’s captain taking time from his busy schedule to peruse these books, most of them written for primary school kids.

Rin raises an eyebrow. “ _You’re_ reading about dolphins!” He leaves the aisle without a book, but Haru can hear the unmistakable sound of Rin’s laughter wafting behind him.

 _Of course_. He cracks open _Voices in the Ocean_ again, trying to bury himself in the blank spaces between the lines. He’s not facing that front room, but he can still hear the group of students. More specifically, Sousuke.

Rin’s bests friend, not a big fan of Haru, but then again, who is?

“Why were you laughing?” Sousuke asks Rin.

There’s a pause, a lull in the conversation. Rin scoffs. “Almost dropped a book on my foot.”

He and Sousuke start teasing each other about disqualification. The conversation picks up like it never paused.

No one is around to witness the rare sight of Haru’s smile.


	48. a traveler's tale

The house seems to press down on them, rafters lying like bars across their arms. Haru doesn’t know how he’s still breathing. It’s almost like swimming past the point of exhaustion, body pinned between cinderblock wedges and rooftop shingles.

“It’s been so long,” Rin says, his brow furrowed in worry. His eyes are wide and glassy and he holds Haru’s hand as carefully as if it was a baby bird. Haru feels the wings beat under Rin’s fingers, just a nudge against skin before folding back into the palm.

He watches their grip and thinks that he doesn’t have to reply. The way he stares at where they touch: he’s saying enough with that.

“Everywhere I went...” And Rin’s shaking his head, red strands of hair following the movement. “Everywhere I went, I always thought about coming back.”

 _But you didn’t_.

But that’s not true, is it? Rin sits right next to him. He does not smell like chlorine or salt or sakura. This town has been tugged away from him, and maybe he was the one to push it away, but he never fled Haru or anything about him.

He’d returned letters, paper inked with the lattice of his letters. He’d returned Christmas gifts and video calls, his grin split into pixels, but still something Haru could see.

Rin smells like the metal of a city’s train station. He smells like warm food from street vendors, like rain and sun and wind. He is not the who he was when he left, but Rin never returns the same.

And Haru knows this. He’d be stupid not to know. So he squeezes Rin’s hand, and he feels like he’s flying.


	49. soulless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know ... to be honest, I forgot that this story existed. I doubt that I'll get to 500, but I'm still pushing through haha.

It’s so dark here, pitch black and devoid of even a pinprick of light. Rin almost feels like he doesn’t exist. Because he can’t live in a place where light doesn’t reach him, make him human as opposed to another nothing.

How could anything be this way? How could anyone merge with this world to the point where every line blurred before its own disappearance? Rin has never known anything so cold. He never wants to know anything like it again.

He ventures further into the darkness. His steps make no sound. The absence of his sneakers thumping on tile, or on sand, or crushing gravel into the gritted ground ... it makes Rin feel as if he’s wafting into empty space.

The two syllables sit in his mouth: _Haru. Ha-ru_. He parts his lips and clenches his jaw until it hurts, letting the name simmer on his tongue. It’s all he wants to say, but when he attempts to speak, there is nothing. Not even the choked sounds of his throat to bounce back at him.

He stops walking, plants both feet on the ground. reaches out, fingers splaying in the inked patch before him. _Please ... Haru, are you here_?

Nothing for a while. His arm aches from keeping it in the same position for so long. He wants to leave, but he won’t. He can’t.

He shakes his hand out, as if that’ll do anything except reduce the cramping in his wrist.

It's surprising enough to make him step back, but there's the soft lock of fingers around his.


	50. wildfire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Implied character death ...

It hadn’t been like this. There was a nudge at his shoulder, Rin’s palm pressing down on the whole of it. There were murmured words — three of them — encased in stale breath.

“Mm,” Haru replied, his eyes still closed.

Rin pressed a kiss to his cheek, and then he’d slunk from beneath the covers, and then he’d left the bedroom.

The sky is gray today. Haru stirs the spoon in his tea. He taps the metal at the rim of the cup, watching drops throw themselves back into black. He sets the spoon on the table. The herbal scent streams from the cup, clotting in the cloud of steam. It’s strong, electric.

But he’s tired.

Outside, the horizon burns. Flames crest over the mountaintops in the distance. He’s high up — high enough to war with them. High enough to see the damage, more and more and more.

He’d always stepped out of the pool with the knowledge that heat awaited him. Rin made fire climb into his cheeks, made him more than pale. Tinted him pink. Made his insides sizzle with static, made his heart ache with the need to seep through his chest. Instead, it displayed desire. His collarbone glowed with a blush the color of roses.

 _You love_. It’s inevitable: a kiss skirting the cheekbone, cotton sheets collapsing into place. It’s inevitable.

You _lose_. And the body blackens. The eyes take in scenery instead of life. And your corpse chars, and it goes ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

Inevitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr: [fiveyen](http://fiveyen.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: [fiveyen](http://wildharu.tumblr.com)


End file.
